sabotabby: (books!)
([personal profile] sabotabby Oct. 15th, 2025 06:55 am)
Just finished: Girls Against God by Jenny Hval. I really don't know what to make of it. It's one of those very cool concepts—body horror! time travel! art! black metal! feminism!—that fails somewhat in execution but fails in interesting ways. It's divided into three parts, the first being a stream-of-consciousness rant by a girl who joins a Norwegian black metal band/aspiring witches coven a few years too late, after the scene has fallen apart, and her desire to rebel against the patriarchy and religion. By the end of the first section I had gone from "well, this is how teenage girls sound, this is how I sounded when I was a teenager" to vaguely annoyed. But then the second two, which are hallucinogenic body horror fever dreams, absolutely whip. I wanted the whole book to be like that.

Currently reading: The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein. Why am I reading a book about writing YA when I have no desire to ever write YA, and knowing the thoughts of teenagers is something I strongly feel I should not have to do without financial compensation? Well, because I got into a discussion with another writer about craft books, and how I don't normally read them, and he recommended this and another one to change my mind about craft books. And also because I seem to have written myself into a situation where I have a teenage POV character, and despite being surrounded by kids all day, writing as one is a whole different ballgame.

So far it's pretty good—I rather like the brainstorming exercises at the end of each section, and the respect that the author has for really good children's/YA fiction (which does, of course, exist, and there's probably even more of it than when I was young, but I wasn't particularly interested in reading about teenagers when I was a teenager). It's 2017 though, so there's a lot more praise for a certain Formerly Beloved Children's Author than she deserves, so if you're going to read it, be warned.
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([personal profile] valancy_jane Oct. 14th, 2025 09:00 pm)
I overexplain things in all the stress.

I'm sorry his teeth aren't great, I said to the vet. I separated from my husband a year ago and then he nearly died and moved back in and then out again and now he's back and that was the one thing he did, brush the dog's teeth. And it's been chaotic.

That sounds like a telenovela, the tech said.

It feels like a telenovela, I said.

The vet changed the subject.
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([personal profile] sabotabby Oct. 10th, 2025 07:06 am)
 There are a lot of very important things to listen to this week about, specifically, your legal rights if you are American or step past the regime's artificial borders. But look, my job here is partially to entertain you in dark times, so that's what I'm doing this week. Check out No Gods No Mayors' episode on Mel Lastman because it's hilarious. 

Mel Lastman was in his last years as mayor when I moved to Toronto, but a lot of what he did continues to influence the city today. He was a forerunner to the Big Fun Strongman archetype that we saw in Rob Ford and to a lesser extent, Doug Ford and Trump, the kind of guy who will answer his phone personally but propose jailing children and implement policies that lead to a lot of dead homeless people and the kind of long-term infrastructure problems that won't affect him, because he's dead, but definitely affect me, a TTC commuter. Lastman was definitely towards the more comedic and less sociopathic end of that archetype and the episode is fucking hilarious, especially the long-running feud with Howard Moscoe. (Side note: I'm sure he had his issues but I had no idea how funny Moscoe is. He comes off as an absolute chad in this episode.)

My two quibbles with this episode: 1) In hindsight, and after knowing some army guys, I think Lastman was right to call the tanks into Toronto during the 1999 snowstorm. 2) It doesn't go into detail about the funniest thing about Lastman's illegitimate sons, which was that he denied he'd fathered them and the paper immediately published a picture of them, leaving zero doubt about their paternity.

Also there's some fun trans humour at the beginning, some of which I don't understand because I'm not an anime person, but it's pretty cute.
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sabotabby: (books!)
([personal profile] sabotabby Oct. 8th, 2025 06:57 am)
Just finished: Genocide Bad: Notes on Palestine, Jewish History, and Collective Liberation by Sim Kern. I don't really have much to add—I'd highly recommend this one, whether you just learned about Palestine two years ago or you've been in the movement for decades. It's well-written, empathetic, and clear-eyed. My only critique is the bit at the end, which is an anarchist vision of a future liberated Palestine and Israel. It's not that I disagree politically, but I'm not sure it needs to be as long as it is, and they have the same issue as Starhawk when it comes to gardening on highways (why would you do this). I think it might turn off people who are not already anarchists, and beyond that, it feels like the kind of vision that everyday Palestinians and Israelis wouldn't necessarily share or relate to. But the core of the book is so good that I'm not terribly bothered by it.

Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel. You know how most alternate histories are about things like "what if the Nazis won WWII?" or "what if the Confederates won the American Civil War?" (how would you be able to tell in the Year Of Our Lord 2025???). What if someone wrote an alternate history that was actually...creative? This is about an alternate India where British colonialism continued into the 60s and 70s. All of the leaders of the independence movement are dead, most of the young men are off at war with China, and Kalki, the daughter of a disappeared revolutionary, dreams of standing up to the British. Together with her college friends, Fauzia, who's Muslim, and Yashu, who's Dalit, she reforms a cell of the Indian Liberation Movement in Mumbai (known as Kingston).

One of my issues with alternate histories is I often wonder what the point of them is. They'll tend to posit our dystopian reality, one in which fascism is ascendant, the climate crisis is raging, and surveillance capitalism owns the most intimate parts of our lives, as the best possible outcome, because isn't that better than the Nazis winning? This book has a point. It uses the failure of the original independence movement to show how resistance movements can grow after a crushing defeat.

Anyway, I loved it. spoilers )

Currently reading: Girls Against God, Jenny Hval. At least one of you read this awhile back and I was like, ooh, I must read that, and I finally started. I haven't gotten far in yet—so far it's a teenage girl ranting about how Norway sucks and black metal rules. Which I can get behind, but given the blurb, I hope it's going somewhere. It does very much have an authentic teenage voice but I deal with authentic teenage voices for a living.
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([personal profile] sabotabby Oct. 3rd, 2025 07:43 am)
 I'm way behind on podcasts as usual and I'm sure there were tons that I thought over the last two weeks that I should highlight but *gestures vaguely at the clown shoes that is my life right now*

Anyway, for your moment of relative levity, check out If Books Could Kill's Thomas Chatterton Williams' "Summer Of Our Discontent." Unlike most of the episodes I hadn't heard of that book or the author until I started listening and went, oh, that guy. For those of you who share my senility, Williams is one of those Token Black Conservatives(TM) who doesn't believe that leopards will eat his face. His middle name is a bad case of nominative determinism as he mouths far-right talking points in the most number of words possible this side of Nick Land. The book could probably be a pamphlet if he wrote like a normal person, but he doesn't. Anyway, it's garbage anti-BLM stuff now that the right has lost Cosby, but it's made a little more fun by just listening to Michael and Peter try to quote it.

Pro tip: No marginalized group is a monolith, and you can't just single out one member of a community because they happen to agree with your take. There's a fortune to be had if you can be that token member of a community that loudly proclaims that said community doesn't actually face oppression,* and that's what this guy is doing, and it's incredibly mockworthy.


* Still trying to cash in on that myself.
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([personal profile] fairestcat Oct. 2nd, 2025 06:41 pm)
The letter will be here soon.
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